Facing the challenges of the Greater Mekong Sub-region

With a growing population greater than the United States, the Greater Mekong Sub-Region is under enormous pressure caused by over-use of natural resources. The World Agroforestry Centre and Chiang Mai University have joined together to help find solutions

By Robert Finlayson

Around 326 million people live in what the Asian Development Bank (ADB) labelled the Greater Mekong Sub-region, straddling six countries and 2.6 million km2. Cambodia, China (specifically Yunnan Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region), Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam share a program of sub-regional economic cooperation designed to enhance their economic relations. They also share substantial land-use problems.

According to Javed Mir of the ADB, every year the sub-region loses 10–12% of its gross domestic product through the over-exploitation of forests, land, wildlife and fisheries as well as pollution to ecosystems. Compounded by climate change, this situation greatly threatens long-term prosperity, including food, energy and water security.

To help address this, on 27 June 2014 the World Agroforestry Centre and Chiang Mai University in northern Thailand signed an extension of their memorandum of understanding to continue to work together, specifically under the aegis of the Knowledge Support Centre for the Greater Mekong Sub-region.

The Support Centre was established in 2009 to increase understanding of the complex and often poorly understood sub-region by sharing information about issues related to natural resources management, environmental services and climate change. This is a matter of increasing urgency as all countries that lie within its scope are undergoing rapid development. In conducting its collaborative programs, the Support Centre not only draws on expertise from the World Agroforestry Centre’s Thailand office and programs throughout Southeast Asia but also that of the Centre’s East and Central Asia program, based in Yunnan Province, which is also carrying out research in the Mekong region.

The MOU was signed on behalf of Chiang Mai University by its president, Associate Professor Niwes Nantachit MD, and for the World Agroforestry Centre by Dr Ujjwal Pradhan, the Southeast Asia regional coordinator, supported by Dr Prasit Wangpakapattanawong, coordinator of the Centre’s Thailand program.

The University is celebrating its 50th Anniversary in 2014 and will commemorate the date by co-hosting with the World Agroforestry Centre an event in December that tackles head-on the challenges facing land use in the region, demonstrating to the Government of Thailand and development agencies that there are practical, low-technology solutions available through deployment of agroforestry systems and associated methodologies.

‘Chiang Mai University is keen on strengthening its role as the centre of education and research for the upper ASEAN region’, said Dr Wangpakapattanawong, ‘with a focus on research in neighbouring countries, particularly through mobilizing support from graduate students and researchers in universities in ASEAN countries and beyond. We see that a special event is needed to focus attention on the problems and the solutions we can offer’.

The World Agroforestry Centre will further support the University through its network of offices in the region and through collaboration with the new Highland Agriculture Department at the Faculty of Agriculture.

Knowledge Support Centre for the Greater Mekong Sub-region

Research conducted through the Knowledge Support Centre

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture solutions amongst ethnic minorities living in remote upland areas of Thailand. With Research Institute of Health Sciences, Chiang Mai University. Funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada. Mar 2013–Feb 2016.

Development and evaluation of a behaviour-change communication strategy to improve child nutrition in villages in northern Thailand: participation and insights of local communities. With School of Population Health/Public Health, University of Adelaide, Australia. Aug 2013–Sep 2015.

Robert Finlayson is the Southeast Asia program's regional communications specialist. As well as writing stories for the Centre's website, he devises and supervises strategies for projects and the countries in the Southeast Asia region, including scripting and producing videos, supervising editors and translators and also assisting with resource mobilization.